Another Pro-Life Issue 10APR14

HERE is this weeks e mail newsletter from Sojourners....
verse of the day

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

- John 15:12-15

voice of the day

"In the Spirit which draws us into honest engagement with one another, including those who may be very different from us in various ways, God calls us to wake up and learn how to love and respect one another, period."

- I. Carter Heyward
 


Another Pro-Life Issue

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Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the closest American prelate to Pope Francis, took nine other bishops to the Mexican-American border for three days of listening to the stories of people who are suffering from America’s horribly broken immigration system. The bishops celebrated a dramatic mass with hundreds of Mexicans, taking communion through slats in the security fence, and laid a wreath at the border commemorating the estimated 6000 people who have died trying to cross.
“We can no longer tolerate the suffering caused by a broken system,” the Cardinal said. “The suffering and death must end.”
When asked how important immigration reform now is to the Catholic Church, O’Malley replied, “It’s another pro-life issue.”
Indeed it is.
Immigration reform is not just an economic issue — although it plays a big role in attracting and retaining talented people who will contribute to our economy. Common-sense immigration reform — as the Cardinal affirmed — is part of a consistent ethic in which all of life is treated as sacred. This includes issues such as abortion, but extends to anything that promotes human flourishing and protects human rights. A consistent life ethic keeps families intact and protects the voiceless. ...
READ THE FULL COLUMN HERE.
Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners. His book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good, is now available. Watch the Story of the Common Good HERE. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.

ON THE GOD'S POLITICS BLOG
View the latest articles from the God's Politics blog »

Remembering That Out of Death Comes Life
by Nikole Lim
Editor's note: The "On Pilgrimage" series features the stories that impacted artist Nikole Limme the most during a pilgrimage to Uganda and Rwanda. The juxtaposition of these stories, themes, and values are conveyed both in narrative and visual storytelling, with each series released weekly starting April 7, 2014, the day the genocide began 20 years ago.
 
Christianity's Most Common and Subtle Sin
by Stephen Mattson
Christianity's most common and subtle sin is … rationalization. Essentially, rationalizing is a way of making excuses. Creating logical, plausible, and valid explanations to justify our sinful actions — or inactions — is easy. We do it all the time because instead of being obviously and visibly wrong, it's covert, motivated by fear, doubt, shame, and guilt, and mixed with what we assume is intellect and reason — in reality it's a form of spiritual escapism. How Conservative Evangelicals Misunderstand Millennials
by Brandan Robertson
News broke recently that Christian relief organization World Vision lost more than 10,000 child sponsorships from people who disagreed with the organization's policy change on hiring people in legal same-sex marriages. To many who watched this controversy unfold, this is an utter travesty. It seems simply unfathomable that anyone who claims to follow Christ could justify removing support from the impoverished children that they know by name because they disagreed with the organization's hiring policy. I am trying my best to be a committed follower of Jesus, and I have been handed a picture of God that I'm discovering is radically inconsistent with the scriptural, historical, orthodox image of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The same could be said, I am confident, of most millennial evangelicals who are, in fact moving away from the version of faith that they inherited in their youth. The Tribes of Rob Bell, Mark Driscoll, John Piper ... and Jesus
by Stephen Mattson
Christianity consists of thousands of tribes, cliques, and communities — each with different theologies, traditions, and doctrinal beliefs. Within a Westernized society obsessed with celebrity, entertainment, popularity, conflict, and money, it can be easy for Christian groups and communities to clash with each other. For the modern church, much of its recent legacy has involved conflict, division, and controversy. Christians have developed a love-hate relationship with theologians, pastors, and church leaders — and it's dividing the church. Many Christians see their faith journeys as a series of either/or situations and decisions — this is bad. Because as much as we want things to be clear, concise, and black-and-white, reality is complex and messy.

Attacks Target Palestinians In Israeli Towns 18NOV11 & Genocide Survivor To Sit On Holocaust Museum Board 17NOV11

Pres Obama just appointed Rwandan refugee, now a naturalized American, Clemantine Wamariya to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum (see the story after the story on Israeli attacks on Palestinians). She is a 23 year old survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. A genocide that happened after the world said "never again" after the holocaust of WWII. The Rwandan genocide happened after the Cambodian (Khmer) genocide, after the Bosnian genocide. Never again. And now, many of the very people who lost the most from their community in the genocide of WWII, are exhibiting the same behavior, or at least tolerating the behavior symptomatic of those who are considering committing genocide. The dehumanization of a people, violations of their human rights, increasing attacks on their homes, communities, businesses, places of worship are all warning signs that were seen in Germany and occupied Europe, in Cambodia and in Bosnia. Yes, there have been massive and brutal attacks against Israelis by Palestinians, and Hamas and Hezbollah remain committed to the destruction of Israel. But the history of Israel and the holocaust should be enough for Israelis to recognize their behavior is becoming alarmingly similar to that of the brown shirts and Nazi troops and complacent citizens who allowed the holocaust to happen.

Attacks Target Palestinians In Israeli Towns

by Sheera Frenkel

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

[3 min 39 sec]

 

Enlarge Ammar Awad/Reuters /Landov A woman shouts slogans during a demonstration against the desecration of headstones at a Muslim and Christian cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, last month. A few dozen Israelis and Palestinians turned out in a show of protest against recent attacks.

In Israel, tensions are rising between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of the population. Over the past few months, several Arab sites have been vandalized by militant Jews who left graffiti such as "Death to Arabs."
Locals blame activists from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
At a recent demonstration on a street corner in the central Israeli town of Jaffa, protesters chant in both Hebrew and Arabic. The crowd is made up of Jews and Palestinians angry over the attacks, which have rocked their community.
Tamar Avia, a 35-year-old Jewish resident of Jaffa, says the neighborhood is being torn apart.
"The problem is national, but it is one that starts on a personal level," she says. "It is a problem that is hitting us in Jaffa hard."

Enlarge Ahmad Gharabli /AFP/Getty Images A man stands near tombstones vandalized in a cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, on Oct. 8. Headstones at the Muslim and Christian cemetery were defaced with messages like "Death to Arabs."

Over the past few months, there has been a series of attacks targeting Palestinians in Israel. In October, a mosque in the northern Arab village of Tuba-Zangariya was torched and a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa was vandalized. At both sites, graffiti were found linking the attacks to Israeli settlers.
Avia says she came to the protest because she was shocked by what is happening. She points out that many right-wing Israelis use different terms for Palestinians who live within Israel.
"They don't call them Palestinians; they call them Israeli Arabs. That's their way to erase their Palestinian identity and kind of contain them within Israel," she says. "The agenda is to have a purely Jewish state and to get rid of all Palestinians, the ones in the West Bank and in Israel."
Avia says these kinds of attacks are new in Jaffa, a coastal community hugging the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city.
For years, Jews and Arabs coexisted there in relative peace. That was interrupted in early 2010, says Fatima Helewa, a local Palestinian activist. That's when Bemuna, a construction company that specializes in building subsidized homes for religious Jewish families in West Bank settlements, started building in Jaffa.
Its first project was in the largely Palestinian neighborhood of Ajami. The Israeli Association for Civil Rights petitioned Israel's High Court to stop the building, claiming that Bemuna's openly stated policy of providing apartments only to Jews was racist.
The court ruled against the association, and Bemuna continues to build in Jaffa.
A spokesman for Bemuna insists there are no ethnic tensions here, but he refused to answer questions on tape. Helewa, who lives just minutes away from one of the building projects, disagrees.
"I think it's a development of racism," she says. "I know many Jewish friends, but I think the general society of Israel is developing racism of Arab people inside and in the West Bank."
She feels that groups such as Bemuna are becoming increasingly popular across Israel. She points to a series of attacks that have occurred this year against Palestinian communities in both the north and the south of Israel.
"You can't argue with me that racism is not developing here," she says. "It's a fact."
Helewa stands in front of the once popular restaurant Abu Elabed, set ablaze earlier this month and spray-painted with graffiti calling for death to Arabs.
She says the attack made her feel unwelcome in her own hometown.
"Arab people, they already live with the Jews. We're living with them years by years," she says. "It's just that Zionism made the settlers more and more racist."
For now, she says that all she can do is continue to protest — and hope that more from the community join her.

Genocide Survivor To Sit On Holocaust Museum Board

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

[6 min 21 sec]

President Obama has appointed Rwandan refugee Clemantine Wamariya to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Wamariya, who's an American now, talks to Renee Montagne about surviving the Rwandan genocide.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Clemantine Wamariya knows more about death than a young woman should. She's an American now, but hovering always in her memory is one of the horrors of the 20th century, the genocide in Rwanda, where she was born. President Obama has now named her to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, at 23 the youngest person ever appointed and the first from Africa. Clemantine Wamariya was still a child when she and her sister ran for their lives. She didn't see her parents until 12 years later, when she won an essay contest sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. Today, she's a student at Yale and her early memories of Rwanda are not without joy.
CLEMANTINE WAMARIYA: We had this huge mango tree in my backyard. Every afternoon we'll have literally just tons of kids climb that tree and play and make as much noise as we want. And that tree became sort of a world where we could travel. You know, it was a train. It was a plane. It was a car. My memory of childhood is so rich, and I think that's why I was able to just sort of live and overcome things that had happened, 'cause I remember how beautiful it was growing up in Rwanda.
MONTAGNE: Everything changed in the spring of 1994 when, over the course of just three months, one ethnic group, the Hutus, killed hundreds of thousands of people from mostly another ethnic group, the Tutsis. You were just six and alone in the house with your sister when the killers came for you.
WAMARIYA: Well, I just remember being in a room and being so scared because I did not know who or what was going to happen. I never knew what death meant. To me, whatever was happening outside, I called it noise. I didn't know it was genocide until I started studying about it. But no one is telling you what's going on because everyone is busy trying to find a way to hide and where to pray and how to pray and how to kneel and how to, you know, raise their hand up high so that they can pray more.
MONTAGNE: Do you remember running with your 16-year-old sister when you were six out of the house into a field? I gather you walked and walked and walked for days to get to the first of many places that you spent as a refugee for the next six years in Africa.
WAMARIYA: Yeah. I mean, how can anyone forget waking up and you know that someone's going to come and get you. You do not know where they're going to come - if they're going to come from the front door, the back door, the window. You're in a panic, absolutely panic, and jump out and go and run and crawl so much that, you know, your knees are completely bleeding but you can't stand up. And all you could think about is your stomach. You know, from morning you think of what you're going to eat to a night where what food, what water can you drink?
MONTAGNE: Your life changed so dramatically when you came to the United States, as a sixth grader.
WAMARIYA: Well, a sixth grader who hadn't been in school until sixth grade.
MONTAGNE: Well, you did pretty well because you ended up at Yale. So how do you do well and still hold this other part of your life in your mind? I mean, how is it even possible?
WAMARIYA: Well, I have had so many incredible people in my life. You know, my first role model being my mother and then my sister, nothing can gander(ph) away. And so when I'm place in a challenge to finish the sixth grade, I will ask for any help I could get so I could get through. But then, you know, to realize that being in school is not only, like, oh, I have received an education, but it's more to learn about others. You know, why we do things to each other as the way we do, such as killing a whole race. What does that really mean? You know, slowly, yes, that it - sort of learning about it, especially in eighth grade, that's that question. And since then I've been hunting it down, trying to understand psychologically why do humans do such terrible things to each other.
MONTAGNE: Do you see your work in the future, your appointment to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, helping you find an answer?
WAMARIYA: I think just sitting with incredible leaders who are making decision of others – they might never have an input of what it means to grow up in a refugee camp as a little girl. You have no mother, you have no father. Am I going to give them an input what it means to live in seven countries where people look at you and they think, oh, you are nobody.
MONTAGNE: Is there a particular person who didn't survive that you think about or that you want especially to be remembered?
WAMARIYA: There are too many. And it's not only people that I lost in the genocide. I am most talking about people that I lost along the way, you know, living in refugee camp and dying with diseases that can strike you in a second. Those people had become my family. What I want to remember is the joy that filled my house every Sunday when we had visitors and the joy that I had playing in the mango tree.
MONTAGNE: Clemantine Wamariya, thank you for taking the time to speak with us.
WAMARIYA: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: Clemantine Wamariya is the newest and youngest person to join the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. This is NPR News.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142437686/rwanda-genocide-survivor-to-sit-on-holocaust-museum-board

MY LATEST LOAN THRU KIVA 16JUL11

Landouard Hagumintwali

Location Undisclosed, Rwanda Food | Grocery Store

A loan of $1,200 helps Landouard Hagumintwali to buy 50 sacks of rice, 20 boxes of juice, 10 jerrycans of groundnut oil and some other goods for his store, as well as pay for labor.

4% raised, $1,150 to go

Select amount to lend

$25

Repayment Term:

14 months (more info)

Repayment Schedule:

Monthly

Pre-Disbursed:

Jul 5, 2011

Listed:

Jul 16, 2011

Currency Exchange Loss:

Possible

Default Protection:

Not Covered

Your funds will be used to backfill this loan.

Repayments will go to you.

Landouard is a merchant, 47 years old and married. He was born in Burundi. He is the father of four children aged between 4 and 14, with three of them attending school. He lives with his younger brother and his younger sister. He finished elementary education.

This is his first loan cycle with the microfinance institution ACB. He will buy 50 sacks of rice, 20 boxes of juice, 10 jerrycans of groundnut oil and some other goods for his store, as well as pay for labor. His growth strategy for his business consists in giving a warmer welcome to customers and doing some marketing for his store to increase his market share. In future he wants to become an important merchant and wholesaler in the area of the great lake for the benefit of his family. He wants to provide his children with education until university level.

Translated from French by Kiva Volunteer,

Robert Mouris

Landouard est un commerçant, il est âgée de 47 ans, il est marié, est il est né au Burundi. Il a 4 enfants entre 4 et 14 ans, 3 vont à l’école,il vit avec son petit frère et sa petite soeur.Son niveau d’éducation est primaire. C’est son premier cycle de prêt avec ACB. Il va acheter 50sacs de riz, 20 cartons du jus ,10 jerricans d’huile d’arachides et autre marchandises pour son commerce et payer la main d’œuvre. Sa stratégie pour la croissance de l’affaire est l’amélioration de l’accueille pour attire la clientèle et faire le marketing de son boutique pour conquérir le marché. Dans l’avenir il veut devenir le grand commerçant, et le grand distributeur dans la région de grand lac, pour sa famille il veut éduquer ses enfants jusqu’au niveau de l’université.

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Additional information about this loan

About Amasezerano Community Banking, S.A.

Amasezerano Community Banking, S.A., is a for-profit microfinance institution founded in 2005 by the Rwandan NGO African Evangelist Enterprises-Rwanda and 61 individual shareholders, and has been a Kiva partner since June 2010. The mission of Amasezerano Community Bank (ACB) is to have a holistic, positive impact on the lives of poor people by providing quality financial services. ACB’s client base is composed primarily of farmers, small-business owners, women entrepreneurs and low-wage private-sector salaried workers. Credit offerings are tailored to meet client needs, and include group solidarity loans, agricultural loans, loans for women entrepreneurs, small-business loans, and loans for salaried workers. ACB also offers mobile money transfers, currency exchange and life insurance services to its borrowers.

About the Country

Country:

Rwanda

Avg Annual Income:

$1,000

Currency:

Rwanda Francs (RWF)

Exchange Rate:

593.0000 RWF = 1 USD